Fish Fear Me

Go Phils

It was a great game last night between the Phillies and Yankees. I am on the Phillies bandwagon just to see them beat the Yankees, make no mistake. But as a baseball fan, both teams are topnotch and it was great baseball played on both sides. I'm kind of pissed about the state of Major League Baseball, but for now...

Go Phils!

I Knew There Was Something Odd There

When that Delta-Northwest flight overflew MSP last week, I thought it was kind of odd that the Air Force had jets sitting on the runway, but never launched them as the unresponsive plane approached and then flew over the Twin Cities. As it turns out, by the time the Air Force was actually notified, if it had been a terrorist hijacking it would have been too late:

The U.S. military would have launched fighter jets to track down an errant Northwest Airlines flight that overshot the Minneapolis airport if officials had been notified sooner, a top commander said Thursday as federal authorities defended the decision to revoke the licenses of the pilots involved.

Gen. Gene Renuart, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said he learned of the incident just four or five minutes before the Federal Aviation Administration regained contact with the pilots, who flew 150 miles past their destination. They have said they got distracted while using their laptops in the cockpit.

It seems there was a smaller but still disturbing delay at NORAD also:

While Renuart would not disclose the precise timetable of events, he said his staff was aware of the problem for roughly 10 minutes and had just alerted the fighter aircraft before they told him about Flight 188 — a gap he also said must be corrected.

It appears the FAA had been out of contact with the flight for at least an hour at that point.

So it was at least 50 minutes before the FAA notified NORAD that they had an unresponsive commercial airliner on their hands? Is that true? If so, what the hell is up with that? 

I said last week that I know the Twin Cities are probably not high on any terrorist target list compared to other cities. The plane was also flying its flight path at a high altitude. And as far as I can tell, there were no major crowd events going on that night. But there are a couple of nuclear power plants that would have been reasonably close along that flight path along with any number of targets in the metro area. All it would have taken would be a sudden change in the planes attitude and ten minutes or less to turn that mystery into a terrorist attack. I hate to think of our Air Force shooting down a plane full of passengers, but better that than a jet crashing into a nuclear power plant.

If the Air Force had been notified, the pilots almost certainly would have taken no action so long as the plane proceeded at high altitude, and perhaps would have gotten their attention if they really weren't asleep. But because the FAA didn't act, there was no one around to act if that plane suddenly took a dive at any number of targets.

That's as inexcusable as the actions of the pilots themselves, and just as disturbing. If not more.

Afghanistan: Some Links

Here are some links if you are looking for more info on Afghanistan and, like me, trying to figure out what the next step should be.

Here are two reports by Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service. Both are in pdf form and are not quick reads, but they have some very good background information on the people, politics, and history of Afghanistan.

• "Afghanistan: Post-War Governance,Security, and U.S. Policy" (July, 2008)
• "Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance" (August, 2009)

Steve Coll has a reasonable column in The New Yorker on the need for heavy lifting on the political side of the war.

• "War and Politics"

Elise Jordan in The Daily Beast on the messaging war.

• "Why Afghans Are Turning on America"

At Stratfor, George Friedman and Reva Bhalla analyze the McChrystal strategy and point out areas where it may fail.

• "The U.S. Challenge in Afghanistan"

I think McChrystal's strategy can succeed, but only with US civilian and political commitments just as deep as the military's. If the US cannot deliver the horsepower to improve the performance of the Afghan government at all levels, not to perfect, but to good enough for the people, it's not going to work. If President Obama and the international community do not make a real commitment that they will stay with it even when we experience setbacks and our own people grow weary, it's not going to work.

I have yet to see the State Department equivalent of McChrystal's assessment and overall strategy. That still makes me a little queasy about this whole thing. I know people want to see Obama commit to the McChrystal plan, but if the civilian side, both Afghan and US, cannot be accomplished we will be wasting the lives of hundreds if not thousands of US troops for nothing. Where is State's plan? If anyone has seen it, for heaven's sake, let me know.

Family History

I haven't had time to research any of it yet, but today my dad filled me in on a few more family tree tidbits that he recently received.

I've known for awhile now that my great-great-great-great grandfather on that side of the family was a Frenchman named Baptiste Bourgeois and he was a tax collector in the early 1800s during Napoleon's reign. I find out today that he was in Cologne, and the timing is such that it certainly is possible. I also got a couple of cryptic notes that his wife, who I thought was Italian, was actually from Corsica, and there's another side note that says "Sicilian". If I remember correctly, one way to insult a Sicilian is to call him an Italian, but I'm not positive on that. I'm not sure if Corsican is an actual nationality or not. I'm going to have to check on that.

In other nationality news, I guess I can add Dutch to my list of nationalities via a great-great-great-grandmother. The ones that I know for sure:

• French
• Italian/Sicilian/Corsican?
• German
• Dutch
• Irish
• English

There have been rumors of others, but I haven't seen anything definitive. I think that's enough to qualify me as a proud mutt though.

Five For Five

It was a remarkably bad weekend here when it came to rooting for sports teams, even by my standards.

Gopher Hockey: Two 3-0 losses to Denver.

Gopher Football: Stomped by Ohio State 38-7.

The Angels fall to the Yankees.

My FFL team got stomped by about 30 points.

The Vikes capped it all off yesterday afternoon by giving the game away to the Steelers. They should have won that game by at least two TDs. Instead they lost by 10 because of mistakes and turnovers for touchdowns. The best offense on the field for Pittsburgh was Minnesota's.

Oh well. Maybe I should start rooting for the Yankees.

Counterproductive Email Of The Day

From MLB.com:

Celebrate the Yanks 40th AL Pennant

Delete.

You can probably guess what my two word response was to that one.

Stop Making Sense

Victor Davis Hanson on President Obama sending Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod out to fight Fox News:

Sending creepy people out to say creepy things does not make sense, when a hit network loves showing Americans how these creepy people say creepy things.

Heh. I'm certain that Fox News does not mind the administration contrasting them with MSNBC and CNN, at a minimum. And while this kind of stuff is going to fire up the partisans on both sides, it's not exactly presidential behavior and I don't think it will help Obama with moderate and independent voters. In fact, it could do him a lot of harm. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But then again, it's not about what makes sense, it's about power.

Line Of The Day

I got a chuckle out of this from one of the passengers on that Delta-Northwest flight that overshot the Twin Cities the other night:

"Either way, every one of us on that flight want the extra miles put on our perks card," he said.

It seems only fair to me.

It also seems kind of strange to me that they didn't scramble at least one fighter to check out what was going on as the plane approached Minneapolis. They just monitored it as it flew over the Twin Cities. Would that have been the case if the plane had been approaching New York or DC? I bet it wouldn't. Not that I think the Twin Cities is high on any terrorist target list, but didn't we just inadvertently tell them something that may apply to a lot of smaller cities?

Great Moments In Minnesota Law

We'll get the easy one out of the way first:

La-Z-Boying while intoxicated? Yep:

The operator of a La-Z-Boy chair converted into a motorized vehicle -- complete with a stereo and cup holders -- has admitted that he crashed the piece of furniture after leaving a bar in Proctor, Minn., extremely drunk.

Dennis LeRoy Anderson, 61, of Proctor, pleaded guilty Monday to hopping on the chair on the night of Aug. 31, 2008, after visiting the Keyboard Lounge, then crashing into a more traditional vehicle in the parking lot. Anderson's blood-alcohol content was 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota.

There's even a pic:

It has headlights, a side mirror, and of course, a cup holder. Everything your suspended-license driver needs to get back and forth to the bar. Unfortunately for numbnuts, state law is pretty clear that if you are in control of anything that is motorized and drive it drunk, they can nail you. I suppose he gets an "A" for creativity, but he's still an idiot. Is it cruel of me to kind of hope that the steering mechanism got him where it counts when he crashed? 

The second case is that a Minnesota woman has been charged with a felony that can land her seven years in prison for being in possession of...bong water? Yep.

It seems that Minnesota law says:

The statute defines a drug "mixture" as "a preparation, compound, mixture, or substance containing a controlled substance, regardless of purity."

The Rice County woman had her home searched in 2007 and police found a bong with 37 grams of liquid in it that tested positive for meth. On the surface it sounds pretty ridiculous to charge somebody with a felony that can land them seven years in jail for possessing bong water, but:

"...a narcotics officer had testified that drug users sometimes keep bong water to drink or inject later."

Seriously? I have no personal knowledge to point to here, but even if true, I can't believe that is anything more than the pathetic desperation of an addict and not true drug possession as intended by the Legislature. Just from an average citizen with no legal training perspective, it seems to me that this situation is ridiculous. So who is to blame?

I have trouble faulting the Legislature for the wording of the statute as many drugs are cut or diluted. Can that practically be narrowly defined for every controlled substance? I have my doubts. And I don't think I can blame the Minnesota Supreme Court for following a strict interpretation of the law, at least in this stage of the process. Technically the prosecutor can charge that woman in that manner. That's what the law says. And I also wonder if overturning that statute would have wreaked all sorts of havoc with other cases that have already been decided.

No, I think the problem here is the prosecutor in this case is abusing his/her discretion for some reason. With the caveat that there may be more here than meets the eye, this seems like an example of one bit of clever lawyering in one case that could pervert justice down the road for a whole bunch more cases unless the Legislature acts. I don't smoke pot, but can you imagine a prosecutor having the ability to send someone to jail for seven years because, even though they possess no actual pot, they have felony amounts of bong water in their possession? It sounds insane, but I guess it's possible now.

Pondering Aghanistan

Last month I did a post on Afghanistan that put me squarely in the camp that was pushing for President Obama to quickly make a decision on whether he was going to follow the McChrystal strategy or not. After a month of reading various articles and opinions, and after the events of this week, I think I may have been hasty there. That delay for the last month may actually have provided the leverage needed to secure a key component of the McChrystal strategy: a central government that, while likely to be far more corrupt than we would like, is at least broadly perceived as legitimate and constitutional.

Would this good news have happened if Obama had already committed to more troops for Afghanistan?

President Barack Obama on Tuesday applauded Afghan President Hamid Karzai for accepting election fraud findings that invalidated nearly a third of the votes cast for him in August.

Obama said the breakthrough offers new hope that a credible Kabul government will emerge to partner with the U.S. and NATO in battling a resurgent Taliban insurgency and blocking al-Qaida's return.

I don't know for sure of course, but I have my doubts that Karzai would have accepted a runoff without the leverage of US support being withheld, or even withdrawn. My opinion of the counter-terrorism option for Afghanistan, where we stand off and use air strikes and special forces to keep al Qaeda from recreating bases there, is that it is ridiculous. But maybe it was never really intended to be implemented. It just had to be credible enough to make Karzai think that we were really considering it as an option. I'm not inclined to give Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt here, that he acted out a role in advocating the CT approach, but I can see how it could have been useful in pressuring Karzai.

I know my friends on the right are as anxious to see a decision made as I was, and maybe I'm giving Obama too much credit here. But intentional or not, I think that having that leverage over Karzai was important.